Opel Employees Agree To Restructuring Plan

2023 Author: Eric Donovan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-08-25 09:36

The compromise of the Opel restructuring plan is approved. The savings package was accepted at three locations, voting will take place in Eisenach soon, the Bochum plant will initially not participate.

The laboriously reached compromise to reorganize the ailing car maker Opel cleared an important hurdle on Friday: IG Metall members at the three Opel locations in Rüsselsheim, Kaiserslautern and Dudenhofen accepted the associated collective agreement with a large majority, as did the metal district Mitte on Announced on Friday in Frankfurt. In doing so, they accept, among other things, that collective bargaining increases will continue to be deferred and salary components that are above the standard will no longer apply. In return, Adam Opel AG is extending the protection against dismissal by two years until the end of 2016.

The deadline for declarations ends on March 27th

The head of the IG Metall Mitte district, Armin Schild, spoke of a “solidarity vote”. With their vote, the employees had opened up a future perspective “for the Opel brand as a whole and for all German locations”. According to the information, 84 percent of the IG Metall members in Rüsselsheim, 91 percent in Kaiserslautern and 92 percent in the Dudenhofen test center supported the compromise. This means that the collective agreement can be signed after a declaration period that ends on March 27th.

At the Eisenach location, the employees should vote in the coming days. The Bochum location, which has been particularly hard hit by the cuts, is not participating for the time being. There, the works council fights to secure jobs and the specification of commitments by management. The Bochum works council boss Rainer Einenkel has so far rejected the plan: "We should be wound up and we should also sign that." Initially, renegotiations should be carried out by the end of the month.

Search for a solution for the Opel plant in Bochum

Schild promised his colleagues in the Ruhr area that IG Metall would use the time to find a solution for the Bochum employees: “The goal of IG Metall is and remains to maintain all Opel locations in Germany in the long term and to prevent redundancies. But it is also clear that the collective agreement can also be implemented at the other locations without approval from Bochum.

The new Opel boss Karl-Thomas Neumann said on Friday at his first works meeting in Rüsselsheim that there was no way around the restructuring plan. The contract means noticeable cuts for all employees: “But we all have to be aware that this contribution is now necessary. We now have to set the right course, we have no time to lose."

At the same time, he called on the workforce to be more confident: "I want a winning mentality to return here." Opel will find its way back to its old strength. However, the way there will be neither easy nor short. The costs would have to be reduced and the image polished up. Opel has been making losses for years, and the sales crisis in Europe is compounding the problem of expensive overcapacities. (dpa)